For the fourth election cycle in a row, a Jersey City school board race is coming down to the Fulop folks versus the anti-Fulop folks.

There are nuances at play in this year’s election, the first since Jersey City voters voted overwhelmingly last year to move balloting from April to November: the district’s teachers are awaiting a new contract, several schools are under review by state officials because of consistently poor test scores and new Schools Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles is still only in her second year on the job.

But the political dominance of Mayor Steve Fulop, who has backed every successful Board of Education candidate since 2010, is again front and center.

This year, the mayor is behind the “Candidates for Excellence” slate: human resources executive Micheline Amy; Jessica Rosero Daye, a special education advocate for a New York civil rights group; and freelance writer Ellen Simon.

The three women, among 10 gunning for three three-year spots on the nine-member board, are strong and vocal supporters of Lyles, and they credit Fulop with helping lure her from Delaware’s largest school district after the BOE ousted former schools chief Charles T. Epps. Jr.

“We have the best chance in a generation to work together for excellent schools, and that’s what motivated us” to run, Simon, 44, said recently at the VIP Diner in Journal Square. “We have to really grasp for it.”

Joining those six candidates are incumbents Carol Lester and Angel Valentin, who are the only two BOE hopefuls vying to finish the one year remaining on the term vacated when former member Marvin Adames resigned last year. Lester, first elected in 2010, is running with the Candidates for Excellence, while Valentin, first elected in 2004, is on the Children First slate.

Contrary to Simon and her running mates, who when asked couldn’t name one decision Lyles has made that they disagree with, Children First candidates are sharp critics of the new schools chief and feel the district is headed in the wrong direction.

“The focus has not been on the children and their education,” Richardson, 43, said in the Children First headquarters on Martin Luther King Drive. “A lot of the focus has been … on recent privatization, giving out contracts, threatening of public employees’ jobs.”

The Children First candidates point to the district’s July decision to outsource its substitute teachers as an example of privatization, as well as Lyles’ controversial move to hire armed contractors to test security at district schools. The superintendent’s critics say that was a move toward privatizing the district’s security personnel, a claim the district denies.

Simon, a Fifth Street resident who has a child at School 5, calls the privatization rumors “fear tactics.”

“This idea that the district can do every last thing itself, especially if it hasn’t been, isn’t working,” she said.

Jersey City school board member Gerald Lyons at the School 16 candidate forum on Oct. 24, 2013.Alyssa Ki/The Jersey Journal

Lyons, 54, said that despite his often severe critiques of the BOE and the school district, he doesn’t want Lyles to fail. Lyons was appointed last year to fill Adames' seat, and is now going for his first full term.

“I will support her to be the most successful she can be, because then that’s going to trickle down,” he said. “We’re not trying to be decisive … All of us want nothing but success.”

The Candidates for Excellence crew name among their priorities lowering the number of district dropouts, strengthening parental engagement and developing partnerships with businesses that can provide internships for students.

Top priorities for the Children First team, meanwhile, are recognizing successful initiatives at city schools and replicating them citywide; opposing any form of privatization; and improving communication between board members and the district’s administration.

Much as with the last three election cycles, Fulop’s preferred candidates are leading the fundraising race. The Candidates for Excellence had raised $11,497 and were sitting on a $9,976 war chest of Oct. 17, while Children First raised just about $1,350 combined by that date. New fundraising totals will be made public tomorrow.